1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to wireless communications systems and devices. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for notifying a user of an appointment.
2. Background of the Related Art
Wireless devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and two-way pagers, offer tremendous flexibility over conventional land-based telephone handsets. These wireless devices enable people to communicate from various places other than a residence, office or payphone. One application of wireless devices is to store information for scheduled appointments. Such appointment information generally includes a date and time to meet a doctor, friend or relative.
However, even if the information of the appointment is stored in the wireless device, a user of the wireless device may still arrive late for or even forget about the appointment. For example, the user may underestimate the travel time to timely arrive at the appointment location or confuse the appointment time as the start time.
To address this problem, some devices are configured to estimate the travel time. However, this approach merely provides the user with a start time based solely upon the estimated travel time. In practice, reliance by the user on a start time calculated in this manner still results in tardiness because the user often forgets to factor in the time to prepare for the travel to the appointment. As such, the user is prone to miscalculating the correct time to prepare and leave for a scheduled appointment. To overcome this problem, there is a need to notify the user of an accurate time to start preparing for an appointment.
The invention provides a method, apparatus and article of manufacture for notifying a user of an appointment. In one embodiment, an appointment time and an appointment location are received for the appointment. A current location of a wireless device is determined. A travel time is estimated for the user to travel from the current location of the wireless device to the appointment location. A lead time is determined for the user to prepare prior to travel from the current location to the appointment location. The estimated travel time, the determined lead time and the appointment time is used to determine an alarm time. The user of the wireless device may be notified of the appointment if a current time reaches the determined alarm time.